Saints (50 page)

Dinah felt naked, hearing the words spoken aloud like that; and yet not defiled, for Harriette’s voice, ungentle as it was, said the poem naturally, truthfully.

“I already knew,” said Harriette, “that you loved a man and could not have him.”

“Am I so transparent?”

“Sometimes, and only because I watch you. I saw how distracted you were some months ago. How people could speak to you at quilting and at prayer meetings and you’d not hear them. Silent you often are, but never inattentive, so I knew. And then, suddenly, around the time that Charlie and Sally got engaged, you changed again. I have never seen such calm. I’m not the only one who noticed it. Vilate said just the other day, ‘Dinah is a well, so deep and pure that only God can drink from her.’”

“She said that?”

“Don’t you recognize it? It’s a line from your own poem. ‘Let us all be wells of living water. Let us, sisters, all be deep and pure, so the Fount of all will know his daughter, and give his only Son to drink from her.’ We read your poetry and quote it like scripture. Because you speak to women as the men so rarely bother to do. But
they
all think that you are writing about the Savior.”

“I am.”

“I wondered if you thought so, too. But those are all love poems, Dinah, and they’re all written to Joseph Smith.”

They were atop the hill now, with the excavation for the temple yawning open before them. Dinah felt giddy, dizzy, as if she would be sucked down into that shadow by the wind, if she leaned too far, if she didn’t hold tight to Harriette to keep her balance.

“Don’t be afraid, shh, shh, you have nothing to fear from me, don’t you see that?” Harriette’s arm was around her shoulders; Dinah was gripping the other arm as if she meant to wring it off. “It was only a few days ago that I understood it all—
you
didn’t give it away. A man came to Sally, a man who knew she was getting married, a man who is trusted in this city, and he told her that God had commanded her to be his spiritual wife. That it was the will of God that the great men of the kingdom have many secret wives, and that even after she married Charlie, this man would come to her secretly so that all the children she conceived would be his.”

Dinah was stunned. Put in those terms the doctrine sounded filthy, not at all like the celestial marriage Joseph had taught to her. Yet she didn’t know how to name the difference. “That sounds,” Dinah said, “like adultery masquerading as religion.”

“It
is
. Sally told him to take a long stroll down the bottom of the Mississippi. He warned her that if she told anyone she’d be damned, and then he went away.”

“But she told
you
.”

“Sally and I are sisters. We have no secrets. And I went to Brother Joseph and asked him about it.”

“You don’t mean that it was—”

“No! Don’t you know your husband better than that?”

Harriette’s words burned her like lightning down a tree. Don’t you know your husband? Dinah had not known how much it would mean to her, to have another woman speak of Joseph Smith and say those words.

“I assure you it was
not
Brother Joseph who came to Sally.”

“Who was it, then?”

“I promised Sally that I’d never tell, and I keep my word. I didn’t tell Brother Joseph, either. I only asked him if there was such a doctrine. And so he swore me to secrecy and told me all about celestial marriage.”

Now it occurred to Dinah that perhaps Harriette had even more in common with her than she had thought. “Are you also his—”

“No. The Lord did not give me to him. Would it matter if I were his wife?”

“Of course it wouldn’t.” Don’t lie to yourself. “Yes, it would. Isn’t that stupid of me? I knew he had another wife when I married him, and yet I’d be jealous of you if—”

“Yes, it’s stupid of you. But then, it’s plain you didn’t understand the doctrine from the start, Dinah. When Joseph was explaining that carnal pleasure was not the purpose of the doctrine, he told me that one of his own wives had refused to let him into her bed, and that he did not regard her as any less his wife because of that. It was at that moment that I knew: he was the lover you were writing to, and you were the wife so unbelieving that you denied your body to your husband.”

“I was testing.” It sounded even to her like a lame apology. Dinah had long been prepared to bear criticism of her accepting Joseph’s offer of marriage; she had never imagined someone might criticize her for refusing him.

“You were testing the Prophet?”

Harriette insisted on looking at things so backwardly. “I was testing myself.”

“Ah. Yes, I was afraid of that, too. That I believed only because I wanted to, and not because God wanted me to.”

“How can you
want
to believe it?”

“Because, Dinah, only a man who already has a wife will look at this ugly woman and realize that she might be something worth having.”

“You aren’t ugly.”

“I have looked thirty-five ever since I was thirteen. To a man, that’s the same as ugly.”

“Until you turn thirty-five.” Log walls formed themselves in the moonlight. “There’s my house.”

“There’s no light. Does that mean that he
is
there or that he
isn’t
?”

“I don’t know. Neither.”

“Don’t you have signals already planned?”

“How can we? We’ve never done this. He might not even come tonight.”

“You’ve never done this? Dinah, do you mean that tonight will be—”

“If he comes.”

“I wouldn’t have come with you if I had known. I’ll say good-night here—”

“No, come in with me.”

“I’ll no more come in with you tonight than I would go in with Sally.” Harriette kissed Dinah’s cheek and then hurried away into the darkness. Dinah watched her out of sight, which wasn’t far, despite the moonlight; the bushes, still bare of leaves, were like a low fog, and Harriette was soon lost in it.

Dinah went to the cabin and opened the door, her hands cold and trembling. He was not inside. He was not sitting on the edge of her new bed, waiting for her. She was relieved; she was disappointed. It was not a new feeling, to be disappointed at the opening of a door. For all these months in America, she had opened doors now and then and been startled, grieved that Val was not just inside, playing on the floor, that Honor was not toddling to meet her, even though she had not been thinking of them until the door opened, even though she did not expect ever to see them again; the patterns in her heart were worn too deep, and she anticipated without knowing it, longing for that familiar, beloved sight. Joseph had never been behind the door, yet he, too, was anticipated, was familiar; she had dreamed him too often, had needed him so many times in years past, when it was Matthew behind the door. She had been disappointed then, too.

She closed the door and latched it, cutting off the wind; yet it wasn’t that much warmer with the door closed, and for a moment she was afraid that the fire had gone out cold. But no, there were some coals. She nursed a flame to life with tinder and a few gentle puffs of breath; soon she had a blaze that filled the room with light. Then she slowly undressed, put on her nightgown, and then sat at the table for a few minutes to write in her journal. But when she tried to put down words about what she had done, what she had seen and felt today, she could not think of anything to write. “Charlie married,” that was all. Then she set her pen aside and scanned through recent pages. She hadn’t written more than two or three proper entries in months. Only poems. How could she baldly write the dilemmas that had torn her all this time? Someone might find this journal, and the evidence would be damning. The world would never understand that her marriage to Joseph was holy, not profane.

So holy that she wondered if perhaps she had waited too long. Harriette was wrong, of course. He would not come tonight. He might not come at all. Her note had been so cryptic; perhaps a clerk had intercepted it, and thought it not important enough to bring it to the Prophet’s notice. Even if he knew she wanted him, why should he come at a woman’s bidding? After she had refused him once, he might well feel it proper to repay one rebuff with another. No, he would not be so petty. Their marriage was pure. Maybe all his marriages were pure. Maybe that’s how celestial marriages ought to be.

If so, then to hell with celestial marriages.

Dinah shuddered at her own thought. Forgive me, she thought. Come to me, Joseph. I’ve waited too long already.

But he did not come. No poem would come to her tonight, either, and so she put her pen away, closed up the inkwell, and blew out the candle at her writing table. Only the fire burned. She threw on a log, so it would last the night. Then she put off her slippers on the dirt floor, and slid under the cold and rough cotton sheets. She curled up, brought her knees to her chest, and prayed—it was too cold and dirty to kneel beside her bed. The wind reached down the chimney and made her fire flare out into the room, putting a little of the acrid smell of smoke into the air. A thin film of dust skittered across the dirt floor. And then, suddenly, she awoke, though she had not been aware that she had dozed. There was a cold wind on her face. The door was open. And a man stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the moonlight.

As the night grew late, Joseph tried to think how he might make his way to Dinah undiscovered. It was Emma herself who gave him the excuse.

“Joseph, I wish you wouldn’t wait till noon to go to Warsaw.”

“The trip’s been planned for a week,” he answered. Little Joseph snuggled into his neck and murmured, “Talk softer, Papa, I’m trying to sleep.”

“That’s what I mean,” Emma said. “You’re getting careless. You know that assassins from Missouri have crossed the river. You should never let them know your comings and goings in advance, it fairly invites them to try their luck with you.”

“You make me sound like a hunted buck.”

“It’s what you are.”

“Papa, shh. You’ll wake me.”

Joseph took little Joseph up the stairs and laid him in his bed. Emma was waiting for him in the hall as he closed the door to the children’s room. “Leave at dawn, Joseph.”

He didn’t blush or stammer. Plotting to sleep with another woman did not hinder his speech at all. “It takes till noon to get things underway in the morning. I’ll go tonight.”

Startled, Emma protested. “But you need your sleep—”

“I have friends. I’ll stay in a farmhouse overnight. Let my murderers look for me by daylight and they’ll have no notion where I am.”

“I have a better idea, Joseph! Don’t go at all!”

Joseph shook his head. “If I can make a deal with Stephen Douglas and his friends we’ll have no hindrance in this state. And they’ve made it clear they want to deal with
me
.” He smiled. “There are actually some people who like me better than they like John Bennett.”

Emma frowned. “I don’t like John Bennett at all. I think he’s a liar.”

“If he is, he’s a very talented one. The whole state of Illinois believes our charter.”

“He smiles too much.”

“He’s a cheerful man. Give me a kiss, love. I’ll have Port hitch up the carriage. No need to waken anyone else.”

“What shall I tell the Brethren?”

Joseph laughed. “
You
tell them nothing! I’ll leave a note for Hyrum. The Brethren don’t much like taking their instructions from my wife.”

“The world would be better if more men took instructions from their wives.”

“Too bad that I’m the only man who does,” Joseph said. He kissed her again and walked down the stairs.

She called after him. “You don’t either, except when it happens to fit what you already had in mind!”

“Quiet! You’ll wake the children!” He laughed at her from the foot of the stairs, and she smiled down at him, and then he turned and went outside in search of Porter Rockwell, hurrying so that he could get to Dinah before she went to sleep.

Port stopped the carriage where Joseph told him. “Take the carriage on to Brother Simon’s place, and tell him I want people to think I stayed with him tonight.”

“Where
will
you be?” Port asked.

“I’ll be at Simon’s place by morning.”

“But what about tonight?”

“If I wanted you to know, I’d tell you.”

Port had his stubborn face on. “You’re not just Joe Smith, you know. If the Church should need you, someone ought to know where you’re to be found.”

“It’s my destruction if it’s known where I am tonight.”

“If you don’t trust me by now, you’re a damned fool,” Porter said. “I wouldn’t tell God himself if he asked me.”

“God already knows.” Why must my friends always test how much I trust them by asking me to trust them all too much? “I’ll be at a new cabin on Mulholland, about a half-mile north of here, four blocks or so east of the temple.”

Porter nodded. “Dinah Kirkham’s place.”

Joseph was annoyed. “How did you know?”

“I make it a point to know who lives in every house between Nauvoo and the nearest patch of wild country. If I don’t know where you’ll be safe, what the hell good am I as a bodyguard?”

“I’m on the Lord’s business there tonight.”

Port shrugged. “Whoever’s business it is, it sure as hell ain’t mine.” He clacked at the horses and the carriage lurched off into the darkness.

It was a fair walk to Dinah’s house in the dark. With the temple going up on the hill now, a good many people were building up here, and Joseph had to walk around several foundation holes. But there were no houses yet; no one saw him as he made his way northward through the night.

When he got there her cabin was dark. It surprised him. Surely she would be waiting for him—or had he misunderstood? What if the note wasn’t from her after all? What if he had been so obsessed with her that he had read an innocent letter all wrong? He could not decide whether to go on to Brother Simon’s house or go up and knock on Dinah’s door. So he did neither, and was standing outside watching when Dinah and Harriette arrived.